The Devil's Writing Dictionary, Part II
Novel: a rambling, proportionally disorganized fictional prose narrative of considerable length (usually 60,000 words or more) that typically possesses some semblance of a plot (unless literary, see Literature) that is presented in between sequences of pointless actions, boring speeches, and unconnected thoughts of a cast of characters who bear a striking resemblance to those individuals in real life who have pissed off the author of the work.
Novella: a rambling, proportionally disorganized fictional prose narrative of modest length (usually less than 60,000 words) that bears a brief and passing resemblance to a novel, if viewed sideways while one squints.
Novelette: a short story beefed up by an author who couldn't stretch the idea out long enough to make it a novella or novel.
On Acceptance: the payment promised to an author when the editor accepts a completed work, which is paid when the editor remembers to send a request to accounting, which they fill out incorrectly and will have to resubmit at least twice more, which is then redirected to a hold file while the publisher scrambles to make their budget report appear more attractive, at which point the request disappears and must be resubmitted as soon as the author's agent calls demanding payment for the tenth or eleventh time.
On Publication: the payment promised to an author upon publication of the work, or the latest industry ploy to withhold one-third to three-quarters of an author's advance until said author is living on beans and ketchup.
On Spec: unassigned/unsolicited work written and submitted by an author to an editor who has not yet stopped opening envelopes that are not marked with the words "requested material."
Organization: a dynamic group of self-serving individuals who pay an annual fee in order to bootlick a tiny percentage of perceived successful members in any given field, established in order to augment the income of said tiny percentage, provide the means and unity for the majority to be guided by the tiny percentage into pursuing their personal agendas via perpetually instigated group hostility, create and award worthless trophies and honors presented to the most effective and dedicated kowtowers and bootlickers to keep hopes high and those dues rolling in, and to provide a constant source of amusement to anyone not especially enamoured of group-think or herd mentality.
Outline: 1) the torturous, terribly painful process of figuring out what the dickens one intends to write and setting down a brief, bulleted summation of the same; 2) the most common idea-killer among organic writers, 3) a coldly hateful and entirely unnecessary chore inflicted on contracted authors by their sadistic agents and editors.
Overview: a term used by unemployed writers to refer to the outline while courting an editor at a writers conference, i.e. "How about I send you an overview of my novel?"
Pacing: the disjointed, stumbling cadence of a story that regularly drags the reader down or knocks them out of the story altogether during the reading experience.
Philosophy, Writing: Whatever motivational garbage a writer tells themselves or their friends in order to keep writing, i.e.: "You know this is an endurance game. All the old playground rules still apply: you don't get picked for the team, you watch the game and come back the next day. When you're picked, forget mistakes, you've got to be better than everyone else on the field. Bloody noses and skinned knees are not an excuse to quit. And if you have the stubbornness (or stupidity) to stay in the game until the end of the day, you get to come back tomorrow and have the crap kicked out of you all over again. But: everyone else who can't stand on the sidelines, play their hearts out or take a few bruises goes home sniffling about what great players they would have been, if only the game had been fair and the other players nicer."
Plot: the plan, scheme, or main story of the work that makes it sound as if it really is a cohesive novel, novella, short story, etc.
POD: an abbreviation for the words "print on demand"; the small press or bankrupt publisher practice of only printing copies of a work after they have been ordered because the printer has placed them on POD (in this case, "pay on delivery.")
POV: an abbreviation for "point of view"; the segment of the story told by the author while role-playing a character, hiding their sentiments behind them, or intruding through their characterization in order to grind a particular ax.
Premise: a very brief, exciting description of the work provided by the author which sounds wonderful but rarely describes the actual work itself.
Printer: 1) a cheap device for producing printed materials, which is usually running out or out of toner, or 2) the company in charge of printing materials, which charges exorbitant fees for producing substandard work guaranteed to be missing pages or to deteriorate faster than the ozone.
Proofreading: the skimming through of the work to admire one's genius and find any typos or errors, not that there will be any.
Proposal: a package of information about the work submitted to a publisher by in author in hopes of selling the work; includes but is not limited to a whiny, three-page letter about how well-connected but poor the author is, a discombobulated summary of a proposed work that may or may not make any sense, and a sampling of the work (usually the first three chapters that the editor will need to cut from the work prior to publication.)
Provocateur: an out-of-work semi-published wannabe who attempts to gain attention by making outrageous statements about an industry-related subject of which s/he understand little but know that their statements will push the buttons of those who do and thus instigate a flame-war which the provocateur will refer to as either a "fruitless dialogue" or "my validation."
Revisions: changes made or requested to be made of work that the editor claims 1) does not quite meet professional standards, 2) is riddled with grammatical and spelling errors, or 3) makes about as much sense as Bruce Wagner's Wild Palms did; the jealousy-born sabotage of the work by an editor who obviously cannot deal with the author’s genius.
Romance: a work of fiction in which nothing much happens except a too-slow or too-fast, overly-complicated love story between two overly-idealized, hysterically heterosexual reader-proxies who practice coitus interruptus at least three times before eventually doing the nasty either on or offstage before the act convinces them to commit to an unrealistic permanent relationship that appears to be emotionally satisfying, as long as the reader is extremely near-sighted, easily duped, unhappy in their own life, or twelve years old.
Satire: the scornful use of heavy irony, vicious sarcasm, caustic ridicule or similar means to expose the truth about polarizing topics without getting one's ass fired, attacked, sued, stalked, shot, etc.
Sci Fi: an abbreviation for "science fiction" used by anyone who wants to piss off science fiction authors, who refuse to call what they write science fiction as it is some sort of insult to their brilliance.
Self-Promotion: any cheap, lame, inappropriate or unprofessional attempt by an author to market themselves or their latest release.
Short Story: fiction that was too short to call a novelette.
Side Bar: a place where one puts monotonous or unnecessary information considered by the writer as wholly enrapturing, such as the Twitter update sidebar on a writer's blog.
Speculative Fiction: what science fiction authors will grudgingly allow you to call their fiction, sometimes, or at least until the next Big Science Fiction Manifesto is published online.
Synopsis: like an outline, a horrible, demeaning exercise in futility inflicted on writers who are expected to briefly describe the work in a present-tense first person presentation that (creepily) sounds quite a bit like their bio.
Thread: certain portions of the work that may or may not be connected, depending on how many times the author forgot said thread was part of the plot.
Trade Magazines: specialized publications for a targeted occupation or industry which employs persons who have failed to achieve or maintain active employment in said occupation or industry.
Unsolicited Submission: describes 99% of the contents of every major publishing house's dumpster on any given day.
Web Site: an online virtual hub for the author that does not offer any practical or usable information about the author or their work, but shows off their latest heavily touched-up, soft-focus mall photostudio headshot, displays inappropriate and often offensive pics, such as naked muscular torsos of decapitated male models, announces their latest news that is at least six to eight months out of date, a coy or gushing bio page that that contains at least one tearful-sounding confession of devotion to the craft, and maintains a guest book used by SPAMmers to leave links to various online porn sites.
Widget: an expensive, worthless, cutesy and/or unnecessary promotional item commissioned by an author to help advertise their latest release, can be anything from hot pink condoms printed with the author's title, a cheap fridge magnet with a too-small, blurry reproduction of the author's cover art, or a professionally printed bookmark with the author's URL misprinted or the release information dated incorrectly.
Word: 1) a single unit of writer expression, generally carefully selected, mulled over and then replaced by another hundreds of time during the writing of the work; 2) the Microsoft word processing program used by writers that is either five years out of date or so new they still haven't figured where the thing is that changes the font style.
Wordcount: the number of words produced for or contained in a piece, usually calculated by the author ten or fifteen times per day before they toss in some padding to make it a little healthier and by extension make themselves appear more productive.
Writing: 1) the hopeless act of a person or thing that writes, usually poorly; 2) the written form: to commit one's thoughts to writing so that if one is hit by a truck tomorrow the ex will know what a complete freaking jerk s/he was; 3) that which is hopelessly and poorly written; the words produced by a pencil with one badly-chewed end, the sputtering ink from a freebie pen picked up at the last writer conference, or the uneven, thready print produced by an inkjet printer in need of a new toner cartridge, or the like.
Writing Space: an area in a private home where the writer stores how-to books, a desktop computer that needs repair work, obsolete software, manuscript drafts and rejection slips while they are out at the coffee shop pretending to write.
YA: an abbreviation for "young adult"; describes the sort of work written by authors who are unable to achieve success writing for the adult fiction market, who have never grown up enough to write adult fiction, or who suffered much unhappiness during their own high school years and retell their suffering through stories that basically consist of scenes that are infinite variations of "Does he like me?" or "Does she like me?" scenarios, fumbling light petting, and climaxes with a disastrous school dance, Homecoming or Prom experience.
Zone: a mystical, non-existent place a writer says they occupy while writing at a furious pace, and from which they cannot be jolted when they don't feel like washing the dishes, doing the laundry, making dinner or going to the day job.
Showing posts with label The Devil's Writing Dictionary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Devil's Writing Dictionary. Show all posts
Friday, November 21, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
DWD Part I
As an addendum to The Devil's Publishing Dictionary, and to honor all those writers out there who are slogging away at NaNoWriMo, PBW is happy to present:
The Devil's Writing Dictionary Part I
Abstract: Something that exists in theory versus reality, such as the author's latest overdue royalty check.
Advertising: 1) expensive but basically useless marketing on which the author spends most of their advance money in order to promote their latest release to other authors, who read them only to see if they should do their next ad in a similar fashion; 2) what publishers do not do for 95% of their contracted authors in order to compel them to spend their advance money on something besides silly luxuries like food, shelter and clothing.
All Rights: the world-wide rights to the work in all medium, which a poor or inattentive author sells for a pittance to a low-level publisher.
Allegory: Fiction written as a tediously extended metaphor utilizing unexplained animals, Greek mythology or non-erotic sex scenes employed by an author to present their moralistic ramblings and tantrums.
Analogy: A parallelism used by an author to compare two things that should share a common element but that only sound good while actually have nothing whatsoever to do with each other, such as "Publishers are like writers; the worst is better than none, which is why the best cannot be expected to deliver on time."
Anthology: a single-volume collection of short stories comprised of one lukewarm ho-hum piece written by a Big Name who gets most of the royalties, and three to twenty-five frantically earnest ho-hum pieces written by a career midlisters who can't get their name on the Times list any other way.
Assignment: a stupid idea thought up by a non-writer in the industry who finds an out-of-work author and hires the dumbass to write and publish it under their byline.
Attachments: the electronic or hard copy of whatever the author forgot to attach to the e-mail or send in the envelope.
Autobiography: the life story of a celebrity figure advertised and bylined to be written by that person, who actually tells their story while drunk during a series of brief phone calls from a Vegas bar to a bored ghost writer, who then writes the book for a small flat fee.
Bio: sanitized, cutesy, important-sounding and/or completely irrelevant information about the author, written by the author (weirdly enough) in third person.
Biography: the mean-spirited or ultra-rosy story of a prominent figure who the author either despises or worships, respectively.
Blog: an online journal written by a writer to 1) bemoan their lack of success, 2) bash other authors who are more successful, 3) bemoan their lack of income, 4) bash political figures/situations they don't understand, 5) bemoan the publisher conspiracy to suppress their genius, 6) post lame excuses as to why they have not been able to blog, 7) post photos of small domestic animals being abused in various ways along with poorly-spelled cutesy captions that are supposed to illustrate the writer's current emotional state or 8) all of the above.
Book: the printed work of fiction, the electronic work of fiction, or what unemployed writers call each of the fifteen, seven-pound piles of paper gathering dust in their spare closet; if poorly written, edited twenty or more times, taken out at least once a week to be reread and wept over, and submitted to one hundred or more publishers, known as Book of the Heart.
Bookplate: A large adhesive label applied to the inside cover of a book and signed by an author too lazy to hold booksignings.
Byline: the line in tiny print under the cover title, blurb, and hook line that gives the author's fake name, usually covered by a discount price sticker.
Chapter: 1) a too-long or too-short installment of the story, made up of one or more scenes, which begins at an overly-contrived point the author decides is a revelation and ends at a plodding point the author views as suspenseful; 2) what a reader has to plow through to get the next tiny nugget of plot information; 3) the maximum amount of a story that an unhappy reader will skim through before a) throwing the book against a wall, b) putting the book through a wood chipper, or c)writing a one-star review on Amazon.com.
Choke: 1) what an editor regularly fantasizes doing to their writers; 2)a term used to refer to the actions of a writer a) whose inability to cope with success or resist going to writer conferences destroys their professional career before it can get off the ground, or b) who spends so much time promoting the first book they're too exhausted to write the second one well, or c) who writes three (mass market) or two (hardcover) books that utterly tank; 3) what an author does while reading their latest royalty statement.
Climax: the least exciting, but often inadvertently the funniest, part of the story.
Clip: a published sample of the author's work, usually six to ten years old, from which they artfully alter or remove the date of publication before sending it with a submission.
Coffee Shop: a public gathering place for blocked writers and people posing as writers who do not actually write but want to look as if they are composing their opus while swilling bad cappuccino and sending angsty/soulful glances to the most attractive customer present.
Computer: a ten- to twenty-year old virus-riddled electronic device designed to replace the typewriter which sometimes accepts data, occasionally performs prescribed operations at sluggish speeds, and now and then display the results of these operations before it crashes and the internal parts of its hard drive begin making that weird haheeeehaheeeehaheeeethukkathukkathukka sound again.
Concrete: That which is not abstract and theoretical but solid and unalterable, such as the condition of the mystery chicken entree at every writers' conference HasBeen Guest Speaker luncheon.
Cover Letter: a one-page letter which the author rewrites about five thousand times before giving up and using the original draft, which the author hopes will so dazzle the editor that they will read more than the first five words of the weather conditions described in the attached submission.
Creative Nonfiction: See James Frey.
Crime Fiction: an inaccurate label currently applied to the Mystery genre by writers born after 1961 in hopes that it will make them and their work sound more hip, now, edgy and/or dangerous.
CV: (curriculum vitae) a professional resume of experience offered to a prospective employer; what a well-educated writer accidentally on purpose sends in with their submission that lists the MFA they spent $100,0000.00 and four years getting at a small college at which a literary great once passed out drunk at a commencement, in hopes that the degree will finally actually do something to get them published.
Dialogue: the aimless, dull conversations conducted by the characters in a story in order to kill time before they engage in the next empty love/wild monkey sex/tedious action/pointless violence/boring scientific discovery/brutal attack by horrific monster scene.
Dues: the minimum amount of fruitless effort, undeserved bashing and similar abuse an author must endure before being considered a genuine professional; this includes but is not limited to ten consecutive years of receiving submission rejections (weekly), twenty pages left out by the printer from the final edition of their first novel, five online pointless hate campaigns, two vicious Publishers Weekly hatchet jobs of their work, the receipt of a small dead animal in a package with no return address, and the acquisition of three or more real life and/or cyber stalkers.
Edit: 1) the writer's search through a written piece for all grammatical, spelling, and factual errors, which when discovered make more sense than the correct form and therefore cannot be changed; self-confirmation that every word one has written is brilliant, flawless, pure genius etc. and under no circumstances must be altered/ruined by a professional editor who will of course turn green with envy the moment s/he reads the piece; 2) what an editor does to forever ruin the work.
Elements: The parts of the author's story (characters, plot, setting, theme, action, dialogue, etc.) which if the book proves wildly successful will be knocked off by every other writer in the genre.
Epilogue: an unnecessary wrap-up restatement end piece added to a story that otherwise would fall short of the expected/contracted wordcount.
Exposition: The beginning of the story, during which nothing much but weather conditions are introduced.
Falling Action: the aftermath of the climax of the story, during which the author explains all the crap s/he couldn't work into the story logically; can double as a viable script for the last scene of any Scooby-Do cartoon.
Fan mail: See hate mail.
Fantasy: a genre in which all the novels retell in some fashion the story from Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Figure of Speech: something that can be safely repeated in front of one's editor.
First Print Rights: rights sold to a publisher offering print production of an author's work, generally for a song.
First Electronic Rights: online rights sold to a publisher too cheap or too small to offer to print an author's work, generally for the first five notes of a song.
First North American Rights: rights sold to a publisher offering production in Canada, United States and Mexico in the medium the writing was published in; also allows them to publish the work in Australia, Asia, Africa, South America and Europe, which makes you wonder what the hell they were doing during high school geography class.
Flash Fiction: fiction of 500 words or less written by an author who is drinking too much coffee or is currently suffering a bad hemorrhoidal flare-up.
Font: the typeface style a writer uses for a submission, manuscript or other written communication in hopes that it makes it look fancy/important/legit/pretty; often resulting in unreadable text.
Freelance: any writer who sells small pieces to magazines, web sites and other similar venues in order to earn enough income for postage and envelopes so they may continue to submit hopeless proposals for a novel no one in New York wants to read or will ever buy.
Freeware: the only software that writers can afford.
Guidelines: the publisher's phony wish-list, generally six to eighteen months out of date, which gives false instructions to writers in order to keep the slushpiles healthy and justify an editor's weekly overtime or work-at-home Fridays.
Happily Ever After: the Disney-cartoon-fairytale ending of a romance novel that does not emulate real life or any realistic romantic relationship, but in which the hero and heroine are presented as going off to live together in eternal bliss, just as soon as the heroine sacrifices everything she was doing to kill time while waiting for her prince to arrive.
Hate Mail: see fan mail.
Historical Fiction: factual error-riddled fiction written set during some era other than modern, customarily featuring a deceased prominent figure or notorious event in history that the author later plays/reenacts while wearing an ill-fitting, inappropriate costume at large writer conferences.
Hook: a story concept that has little to do with the story but that the author employs as a premise in hopes of peddling the work to agents, editors, and/or readers; usually based on another, bestselling author's hook.
Horror: a genre in which all the novels retell in some fashion the story from Dracula by Bram Stoker, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, or Gray's Anatomy by Dr. Henry Gray( after it's been run through a wood chipper.)
IM: an instant online messaging service which writers use to bitch to online writer friends whenever they hit a story block, receive a nasty rejection or discover another writer has obviously stolen their plot, title or character idea.
Imagery: the densely-worded, highly descriptive, flighty, yawn-inducing passages written by an author that serve no purpose except as filler between the dialogue and action.
Kill Fee: litigation-avoidance payoff given by a publisher to a writer if they steal the idea from said writer's submission to give to another writer they think will sell better.
Knock-off: fanfic based on a popular bestselling, retired or deceased author's original work, sold as original fiction by the knock-off artist, who guarantees him/herself a ready-made reader base and at least one if not two writer organization awards.
Lap Top: a used portable computer purchased from eBay by writers so they can appear more legit to the cute patrons while hanging out at Starbuck's and pretending to write.
Lead Time: the time between acceptance and publication of the work. Also known as eternity.
Literature: any written work that fulfills the following criteria: 1) doesn't sell well, 2) has no plot, 3) is written in high-end language by a well-educated substance abuser who sponges off honest, hard-working relatives while despairing of anyone ever understanding his/her pain, 4) features unnecessary abuse of characters (often horrible), 5) is depressing and utterly without merit and 6) always ends badly.
Mac: a brand of computer purchased by authors who have reinstalled Windows more than four times and are pissed because Microsoft won't let them do it a fifth time, because how else are they going to install that bootleg copy of The X-Rated Sims they bought from their cousin Jerry.
Manifesto: a public declaration of the writer's phony intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives, worded to sound like something important and noteworthy; often employed by groups of unemployed writers in hopes of attracting enough notice to make them appear as if they have their finger on the pulse of a genre in which they cannot get published.
Manuscript: six to eight pounds of semi-cohesive but somewhat confused fiction printed in fading inkjet ink on cheap paper the author got on sale at Office Depot or stole one ream at a time from their day job.
Markets: places that will actually pay authors for their work, or say they will, maybe, once the thing is in print, the returns have been counted and subtracted, and the moon enters the seventh house on a Tuesday during a month that ends in -ch in an odd year.
Market Research: what a writer says they are doing when they buy books they want to read because the novel isn't going well and there's nothing decent to watch on TV.
Metaphor: a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance and make the author appear clever and sensitive to life versus being the emotionally stunted voluntary shut-in they are in reality; sometimes a thinly-veiled comparison between some hideous monster and the author's former love interest, editor or day job boss.
Mystery: a genre in which all the novels retell in some fashion any story written by Agatha Christie (written by authors born before 1961) or Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris (written by authors born after 1961.)
(Stop by tomorrow for Part II.)
The Devil's Writing Dictionary Part I
Abstract: Something that exists in theory versus reality, such as the author's latest overdue royalty check.
Advertising: 1) expensive but basically useless marketing on which the author spends most of their advance money in order to promote their latest release to other authors, who read them only to see if they should do their next ad in a similar fashion; 2) what publishers do not do for 95% of their contracted authors in order to compel them to spend their advance money on something besides silly luxuries like food, shelter and clothing.
All Rights: the world-wide rights to the work in all medium, which a poor or inattentive author sells for a pittance to a low-level publisher.
Allegory: Fiction written as a tediously extended metaphor utilizing unexplained animals, Greek mythology or non-erotic sex scenes employed by an author to present their moralistic ramblings and tantrums.
Analogy: A parallelism used by an author to compare two things that should share a common element but that only sound good while actually have nothing whatsoever to do with each other, such as "Publishers are like writers; the worst is better than none, which is why the best cannot be expected to deliver on time."
Anthology: a single-volume collection of short stories comprised of one lukewarm ho-hum piece written by a Big Name who gets most of the royalties, and three to twenty-five frantically earnest ho-hum pieces written by a career midlisters who can't get their name on the Times list any other way.
Assignment: a stupid idea thought up by a non-writer in the industry who finds an out-of-work author and hires the dumbass to write and publish it under their byline.
Attachments: the electronic or hard copy of whatever the author forgot to attach to the e-mail or send in the envelope.
Autobiography: the life story of a celebrity figure advertised and bylined to be written by that person, who actually tells their story while drunk during a series of brief phone calls from a Vegas bar to a bored ghost writer, who then writes the book for a small flat fee.
Bio: sanitized, cutesy, important-sounding and/or completely irrelevant information about the author, written by the author (weirdly enough) in third person.
Biography: the mean-spirited or ultra-rosy story of a prominent figure who the author either despises or worships, respectively.
Blog: an online journal written by a writer to 1) bemoan their lack of success, 2) bash other authors who are more successful, 3) bemoan their lack of income, 4) bash political figures/situations they don't understand, 5) bemoan the publisher conspiracy to suppress their genius, 6) post lame excuses as to why they have not been able to blog, 7) post photos of small domestic animals being abused in various ways along with poorly-spelled cutesy captions that are supposed to illustrate the writer's current emotional state or 8) all of the above.
Book: the printed work of fiction, the electronic work of fiction, or what unemployed writers call each of the fifteen, seven-pound piles of paper gathering dust in their spare closet; if poorly written, edited twenty or more times, taken out at least once a week to be reread and wept over, and submitted to one hundred or more publishers, known as Book of the Heart.
Bookplate: A large adhesive label applied to the inside cover of a book and signed by an author too lazy to hold booksignings.
Byline: the line in tiny print under the cover title, blurb, and hook line that gives the author's fake name, usually covered by a discount price sticker.
Chapter: 1) a too-long or too-short installment of the story, made up of one or more scenes, which begins at an overly-contrived point the author decides is a revelation and ends at a plodding point the author views as suspenseful; 2) what a reader has to plow through to get the next tiny nugget of plot information; 3) the maximum amount of a story that an unhappy reader will skim through before a) throwing the book against a wall, b) putting the book through a wood chipper, or c)writing a one-star review on Amazon.com.
Choke: 1) what an editor regularly fantasizes doing to their writers; 2)a term used to refer to the actions of a writer a) whose inability to cope with success or resist going to writer conferences destroys their professional career before it can get off the ground, or b) who spends so much time promoting the first book they're too exhausted to write the second one well, or c) who writes three (mass market) or two (hardcover) books that utterly tank; 3) what an author does while reading their latest royalty statement.
Climax: the least exciting, but often inadvertently the funniest, part of the story.
Clip: a published sample of the author's work, usually six to ten years old, from which they artfully alter or remove the date of publication before sending it with a submission.
Coffee Shop: a public gathering place for blocked writers and people posing as writers who do not actually write but want to look as if they are composing their opus while swilling bad cappuccino and sending angsty/soulful glances to the most attractive customer present.
Computer: a ten- to twenty-year old virus-riddled electronic device designed to replace the typewriter which sometimes accepts data, occasionally performs prescribed operations at sluggish speeds, and now and then display the results of these operations before it crashes and the internal parts of its hard drive begin making that weird haheeeehaheeeehaheeeethukkathukkathukka sound again.
Concrete: That which is not abstract and theoretical but solid and unalterable, such as the condition of the mystery chicken entree at every writers' conference HasBeen Guest Speaker luncheon.
Cover Letter: a one-page letter which the author rewrites about five thousand times before giving up and using the original draft, which the author hopes will so dazzle the editor that they will read more than the first five words of the weather conditions described in the attached submission.
Creative Nonfiction: See James Frey.
Crime Fiction: an inaccurate label currently applied to the Mystery genre by writers born after 1961 in hopes that it will make them and their work sound more hip, now, edgy and/or dangerous.
CV: (curriculum vitae) a professional resume of experience offered to a prospective employer; what a well-educated writer accidentally on purpose sends in with their submission that lists the MFA they spent $100,0000.00 and four years getting at a small college at which a literary great once passed out drunk at a commencement, in hopes that the degree will finally actually do something to get them published.
Dialogue: the aimless, dull conversations conducted by the characters in a story in order to kill time before they engage in the next empty love/wild monkey sex/tedious action/pointless violence/boring scientific discovery/brutal attack by horrific monster scene.
Dues: the minimum amount of fruitless effort, undeserved bashing and similar abuse an author must endure before being considered a genuine professional; this includes but is not limited to ten consecutive years of receiving submission rejections (weekly), twenty pages left out by the printer from the final edition of their first novel, five online pointless hate campaigns, two vicious Publishers Weekly hatchet jobs of their work, the receipt of a small dead animal in a package with no return address, and the acquisition of three or more real life and/or cyber stalkers.
Edit: 1) the writer's search through a written piece for all grammatical, spelling, and factual errors, which when discovered make more sense than the correct form and therefore cannot be changed; self-confirmation that every word one has written is brilliant, flawless, pure genius etc. and under no circumstances must be altered/ruined by a professional editor who will of course turn green with envy the moment s/he reads the piece; 2) what an editor does to forever ruin the work.
Elements: The parts of the author's story (characters, plot, setting, theme, action, dialogue, etc.) which if the book proves wildly successful will be knocked off by every other writer in the genre.
Epilogue: an unnecessary wrap-up restatement end piece added to a story that otherwise would fall short of the expected/contracted wordcount.
Exposition: The beginning of the story, during which nothing much but weather conditions are introduced.
Falling Action: the aftermath of the climax of the story, during which the author explains all the crap s/he couldn't work into the story logically; can double as a viable script for the last scene of any Scooby-Do cartoon.
Fan mail: See hate mail.
Fantasy: a genre in which all the novels retell in some fashion the story from Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Figure of Speech: something that can be safely repeated in front of one's editor.
First Print Rights: rights sold to a publisher offering print production of an author's work, generally for a song.
First Electronic Rights: online rights sold to a publisher too cheap or too small to offer to print an author's work, generally for the first five notes of a song.
First North American Rights: rights sold to a publisher offering production in Canada, United States and Mexico in the medium the writing was published in; also allows them to publish the work in Australia, Asia, Africa, South America and Europe, which makes you wonder what the hell they were doing during high school geography class.
Flash Fiction: fiction of 500 words or less written by an author who is drinking too much coffee or is currently suffering a bad hemorrhoidal flare-up.
Font: the typeface style a writer uses for a submission, manuscript or other written communication in hopes that it makes it look fancy/important/legit/pretty; often resulting in unreadable text.
Freelance: any writer who sells small pieces to magazines, web sites and other similar venues in order to earn enough income for postage and envelopes so they may continue to submit hopeless proposals for a novel no one in New York wants to read or will ever buy.
Freeware: the only software that writers can afford.
Guidelines: the publisher's phony wish-list, generally six to eighteen months out of date, which gives false instructions to writers in order to keep the slushpiles healthy and justify an editor's weekly overtime or work-at-home Fridays.
Happily Ever After: the Disney-cartoon-fairytale ending of a romance novel that does not emulate real life or any realistic romantic relationship, but in which the hero and heroine are presented as going off to live together in eternal bliss, just as soon as the heroine sacrifices everything she was doing to kill time while waiting for her prince to arrive.
Hate Mail: see fan mail.
Historical Fiction: factual error-riddled fiction written set during some era other than modern, customarily featuring a deceased prominent figure or notorious event in history that the author later plays/reenacts while wearing an ill-fitting, inappropriate costume at large writer conferences.
Hook: a story concept that has little to do with the story but that the author employs as a premise in hopes of peddling the work to agents, editors, and/or readers; usually based on another, bestselling author's hook.
Horror: a genre in which all the novels retell in some fashion the story from Dracula by Bram Stoker, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, or Gray's Anatomy by Dr. Henry Gray( after it's been run through a wood chipper.)
IM: an instant online messaging service which writers use to bitch to online writer friends whenever they hit a story block, receive a nasty rejection or discover another writer has obviously stolen their plot, title or character idea.
Imagery: the densely-worded, highly descriptive, flighty, yawn-inducing passages written by an author that serve no purpose except as filler between the dialogue and action.
Kill Fee: litigation-avoidance payoff given by a publisher to a writer if they steal the idea from said writer's submission to give to another writer they think will sell better.
Knock-off: fanfic based on a popular bestselling, retired or deceased author's original work, sold as original fiction by the knock-off artist, who guarantees him/herself a ready-made reader base and at least one if not two writer organization awards.
Lap Top: a used portable computer purchased from eBay by writers so they can appear more legit to the cute patrons while hanging out at Starbuck's and pretending to write.
Lead Time: the time between acceptance and publication of the work. Also known as eternity.
Literature: any written work that fulfills the following criteria: 1) doesn't sell well, 2) has no plot, 3) is written in high-end language by a well-educated substance abuser who sponges off honest, hard-working relatives while despairing of anyone ever understanding his/her pain, 4) features unnecessary abuse of characters (often horrible), 5) is depressing and utterly without merit and 6) always ends badly.
Mac: a brand of computer purchased by authors who have reinstalled Windows more than four times and are pissed because Microsoft won't let them do it a fifth time, because how else are they going to install that bootleg copy of The X-Rated Sims they bought from their cousin Jerry.
Manifesto: a public declaration of the writer's phony intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives, worded to sound like something important and noteworthy; often employed by groups of unemployed writers in hopes of attracting enough notice to make them appear as if they have their finger on the pulse of a genre in which they cannot get published.
Manuscript: six to eight pounds of semi-cohesive but somewhat confused fiction printed in fading inkjet ink on cheap paper the author got on sale at Office Depot or stole one ream at a time from their day job.
Markets: places that will actually pay authors for their work, or say they will, maybe, once the thing is in print, the returns have been counted and subtracted, and the moon enters the seventh house on a Tuesday during a month that ends in -ch in an odd year.
Market Research: what a writer says they are doing when they buy books they want to read because the novel isn't going well and there's nothing decent to watch on TV.
Metaphor: a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance and make the author appear clever and sensitive to life versus being the emotionally stunted voluntary shut-in they are in reality; sometimes a thinly-veiled comparison between some hideous monster and the author's former love interest, editor or day job boss.
Mystery: a genre in which all the novels retell in some fashion any story written by Agatha Christie (written by authors born before 1961) or Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris (written by authors born after 1961.)
(Stop by tomorrow for Part II.)
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